The Darkest Tale
by xxskyWriterxx
Summary: What began as a simple bedtime story blossomed into something much more meaningful. Oneshot. No pairings.


**The Darkest Tale**

Her breath came in shuddering gasps, and the blaze that she gulped down scorched her throat dry. The pain racked her entire body, and she ached with a burn that pulsed raw in her every nerve. She attempted to fight it, block it out with her mind, but it continued to mash her in its grasp without any hope of relief. Her temples throbbed, as if her very mind was about to burst through her cranium, split her skull, and pour out into the void in a stream of liquid flame. Her legs trembling, her scowl twisted in anguish and her eyes squeezed shut, she threw her arms out in front of her; there was a reverberating clang and it was as if her palms had been smattered with a billion glass slivers, her fingers curling as they were wrought with this new agony. Needles of light glittered through her eyelids' darkness, which was flickering and thawing away in the encroaching tide of radiance. Grimacing, she wrenched open an eye and looked about her, the horror of the situation suffocating her as a fist does a windpipe.

She was encased on all sides by some kind of box, jammed so that she could not bend over, her skin dripping and slithering against the glasslike walls. She was caged like a hamster, and this realization triggered a fresh wave of wrath to ripple through her, hellfire smoldering in the caverns that were her eyes. She ground her teeth and clenched her fingers into throbbing fists, trembling all over from both her fury and her disbelief. She could not take it much longer. A shriek of fury erupting from her lips, she drew her arm back and slammed her fist against a wall of her prison, only to withdraw her fingers as quickly as she had thrown them, darts of agony crippling her battered limbs. Again. She had been attempting to break herself free for what seemed like an eternity, and yet she refused to admit defeat.

_I never lose,_ the girl thought to herself as she hurled a couple of ferocious kicks, only to have them glance off of the barrier with resounding gongs, gongs that swelled and swelled and assaulted her ears, mocking her. _I never lose…_

Her cries shattered the air as she hurled herself forward, and as her face smashed up against her bubble of a prison, her eyes filled with a pulse, a light swelling in the emptiness around her. It burned, tore, ripped at her very being. She trembled and her knees gave way, struggling to breathe as she sagged over herself, her muscles resisting her exhaustion with all the strength of a deceased jellyfish. Her head drooped like a snow-laden twig, fireworks sparking her vision and the waves of pain drenching her in a glacial sweat. Chunks of her hair were plastered to her forehead in streams of glistening platinum. She squeezed her eyes shut once more, feeling the trickle of her blood on her skin and the landslide of air that slammed down on her spine. _This could not be happening…_

At once she felt a flare against the glass; she wrenched her eyes open to stretch wider than the sky, her jaw dropping in horror as a ton of lead dove into her stomach. The void suspending her prison had somehow drained away and she was falling, plunging into the multiverse of color that swathed around her, her head twirling as her eyes squinted against the radiance. She felt the tide of blood thundering in her ears and she felt her legs flinging above her head and then flopping beneath her. She couldn't react. Her eyes stared like those of a mannequin, like a pair of glass beads embedded in her skull. She saw red and realized that it was her own blood, slithering in rivers along the walls of crystal. ….down….down…down… Surely she would fall forever, down and down and down, sealed like a fly in a pane of eternity. Her fingers were like those of a newborn, smashed up against the glass as she floundered in her hopelessness. Her mouth wrenched open as a scream ripped through the air, but it was a moment before she realized that the scream had been her own. Her skeleton seared. Her skull throbbed. Her soul dripped out from the soles of her feet. And it wasn't until a fist seized away her breath that she finally awoke.

Her eyes snapped open and her lungs gulped air. The atmosphere washed over her in a cool tide, her limbs dripping sweat. Her mind had just barely resurfaced before she was drowned in a pair of beady eyes, a face looming just above her own. Her breath froze in her throat and she scrabbled at her chest as if the Grim Reaper had just ripped her soul from it, her eyes expanding into galaxies beneath her leaping eyebrows.

"Hiya, Mandy!" bellowed a voice, a Cheshire-cat smile blossoming before the flabbergasted girl's eyes.

That mindless tone. Those eyes glimmering with that hollow ecstasy. It was all very familiar: a little _too_ familiar, in fact. Something clicked in the girl's brain and then her mask of sullenness settled back over her face, a thunderhead brooding over her shoulders and embittering her. Mandy pinched her forehead and blew an exasperated sigh, rumpling a few strands of corn-silk hair from her ears.

It had only been a dream.

Her head bowed in frustration and she breathed another sigh, but when her eyes resurfaced from the sea of gloom, it was as if they'd been jammed with heavy artillery in their absence. Mandy wielded her eyes with the force of a double-edged sword, frosted with the moonlight's deadly silver. If her target had been anyone but the particular boy perched on her stomach, then they would have been impaled by the lance of her gaze. The boy, however, sat as if nothing had happened at all, grinning and lapping his tongue as the dagger of Mandy's glare glanced off of his skull.

She blinked. She breathed. And then finally she spoke, her voice oozing like venom over her tongue.

"Billy, it's _two o' clock_ in the morning." Her face veered up to his, murder bloodying her eyes. "_What_"_—_she loomed a little closer—"_do_"-a little closer-"_you_"-her nonexistent nose pressed up against Billy's bulbous one-_**"want**__?_" she hissed, her teeth gritted.

"I wanna story, Mandy; I wants you to tell me a story!" Billy belted out, bouncing and slamming Mandy under his backside as if she was nothing but another pillow on the bed.

"It's two o'clock in the morning; I'm not telling you a…_story_." That last word stabbed from Mandy's lips with the precision of a professional murderess, her eyes hurling daggers like razor blades from the slits of her eyes. She blinked and suddenly it was as if a rain cloud had passed over Billy: all traces of his former cheer had soured, his lip trembling, his nose snorting, and his eyes crinkling and sparkling with tears.

"Now you will get your useless butt off of me, slimeball, and you will do it _now_." Mandy snapped. Billy's fingers fussed with the fuzz on his pink footie pajamas. He shifted on her bed, rumpling the sheets like the petals of a rose, sucking pathetically at the air as a tear glittered from the end of his nose.

"_**Now**_…" Mandy demanded, stabbing a finger down at the floor as if she were disciplining a misbehaving puppy.

"Awwww; but, Mandy, I'm scareds!" Billy moaned. "'Cause I hads an awful rotten nightmare and there were these clowns that ate everything and I tried to get away but they caughts me and then I woke up and now I hear thems sneaking around in the house!"

There was a ghost of a rustle from outside and Billy shrieked, his eyes bulging and darting around Mandy's bedroom, which aside from the moonlight glimmering in the window was swamped in stirring darkness.

"See; did ya hear that?" he squealed, seizing silky handfuls of Mandy's nightgown. "Now they're gonna invade your house too!; you've gotta help me, Mandy!"

Mandy's hands flung into the air, splattering the covers with shadow.

"For the millionth time; there are no stupid clowns out there! Go back to your own stupid house and stay there, you stupid brain dead monkey!"

"But I caaaan't…." Billy moaned, squeezing Mandy tighter to him—for a moment she was a doll, petrified in his arms. "I _needs_ you to tell me a story to make me feel better! I'm too scareds to go back!"

Billy found himself breathless on the ground before he could utter another word, the sting of the slap still ringing on his skin and in the play of darkness that sliced the carpet beneath him. Mandy towered over him like a guillotine, her lip curled, her eyes narrowed, and her hand poised in the air, threatening to deliver another blow. He was a pebble, sniffling up at the avalanche that bore down upon him, an avalanche that at the last moment thundered to a halt, like a blade dangling only a millimeter from his throat. The silence that ensued was one that no word dared to break.

"Fine…" Mandy spat in her most lethal tone. "Get your dumb butt over here and I'll…tell you…a _story_." She choked out that last word like a poison on her tongue.

Billy, of course, took absolutely no notice. His sobs cracked into smiles as he clapped and squealed to his heart's content, scampering back onto the bed and planting himself beside her, his eyes glimmering like a rat's from the covers. Mandy's glare magnified, eyeing Billy as if he was a festering scrap of garbage, one that smirked and beamed back at her, its eyes brimming with anticipation. The growl that escaped Mandy's throat could have frozen the sun.

"What story are ya gonna tell me, Mandy?" Billy babbled, launching himself up and down in what could have possibly been described as a bounce. "Is it the one with the weird little girl with the funny red hood that gets eated by that wolf? I don't likes that one 'cause it gives me nightmares."

"No; I refuse to drag my image any lower by reiterating such filth." Mandy snapped.

"YAY! What's it gonna be, then? Huh? Huhhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh?"

The longer Mandy's ears were assaulted with Billy's ape-like chant, the deeper her grimace became. When she could stand it no longer, she drowned Billy's banter with a glacier of her hardest words.

"I only know of one tale, one story worthy to be spoken by the likes of me. It.."

"Ooohhh! Does it have sandwiches in it?" Billy interrupted.

"No, you stupid…"

"How about marines? Tornadoes? Tomatoes? Rabbit eating gnomes with little arctic villages made of frozen steak sauce?"

"Why don't you listen and let me talk, so you can find out for yourself?" Mandy hissed, her sentence encrusted with icicles. Billy bobbled his head, his smile widening in exhilaration.

Mandy sucked at the air, her glare sliding from Billy's face to the sill of her bedroom window, where it shot from the earth and lingered in the frost of the stars. Her knuckles whitened on the edge of the blanket, her hair frosted in moonlight. She breathed in. She breathed out. And so she began her tale.

"_Once, not that long ago, deep within the womb of this Earth, a special time had once again arrived, for the one who called Himself the Devil. It had come time for Him to create a new member of His kin, and this new Devil would be His successor, His heir, the one destined to rule His fiery realm of tortured souls after he had departed. The Devil did not desire to create an heir, no Devil did, but it was required of them by the lords of the netherworlds-these were the Angels, otherwise known as the Skye-walkers. These winged guardians of Heaven had decreed that once every millennium, the Devil would be required to bestow His kingdom to the hands of a successor, that way no Devil would grow powerful enough to break free of Heaven's celestial rule. Each Devil could create only a single heir, and only at the appointed time would He be able to fashion it. This was to keep Him from forming armies of His kindred, and using sheer numbers to usurp the Sky-walkers' throne."_

"_The current Devil was furious at these boundaries forced upon Him by the Angels, but He had no power to repel their decrees. Thus, on the first of November, the Devil combined the fire of Hell and His own fearsome magic to bring the essence of a new Devil crackling into existence. Upon magical examination of this essence, the Devil was terrified to learn of one thing…that His heir, the Devil to be, was of the female spirit. Never before, throughout the entire span of time, had there ever been a female Devil- it was simply unheard of. Beset with rage, the Devil pleaded His case to the Underworld Court, stating that He could not allow this newborn heir to be the one to inherit His throne. Of one thing He was certain: that the existence of a female Devil was an atrocity on the name of the Hell itself, and the introduction of such a being would destroy the balance of the Fire and the Light. The Devil spoke with such arrogance and such wrath that he eventually won the support of the Court, who in turn brought the case to the White King, the supreme lord of the Skye-walkers."_

"_From His throne of swirling cloud, the White King heard the Devil's plea, sympathizing with the dilemma of the distraught Fire King. The White King then turned the case over to the Heavenly Court, which disputed the issue for what seemed like a century. After a fortnight, the Court reached a decision: the Devil would be allowed to keep His position for another shift, until the time came again for Him to create an heir, a new heir, with the hopes that it would next time be male. Only one issue remained: what would become of the female Devil? Some of the Skye-walkers suggested that it be destroyed at once by the cleansing flame of the White King, while others dreamt of converting it into the essence of a female Skye-walker, a Angel wreathed in sunlight. Here, the White King intervened, and He spoke His words of wisdom. Being a merciful Lord, He could not bear to cast the essence into the oblivion of His flame, but yet He was aware that an essence created by such an Evil could never be transformed into an Angel. The essence was instead to be implanted into the womb of a human woman, in the hope that she could bear the Devil-human child and raise it as one of her own. And this is what was done."_

"_The White King located a suitable mother for the Devil child, a woman who was happily married but sterile, saddened by her inability to bear a child of her own. A flick of the White King's finger and the essence splintered through the very fabric of the universe, tumbling from the pearly gates of the Skye realm and down into the atmosphere of Earth, the land of the mortals. There, the essence was embedded into the uterine walls of the chosen woman, who staggered in the whiteness of the doctor's office as she was informed of her mysterious pregnancy, her befuddled husband at her side. And so the child was born, half human, half Devil, not of this world. None the less, she was raised by the woman and her husband as a mortal, and the older she grew, the unhappier she became. She vowed to take control of the Earth, of the netherworlds, and thus get her vengeance on her Devil father, who had so heartlessly rejected her." _

In Mandy's throat, her voice sputtered and died. She collapsed into the darkness, her eyes as stretched as the sky and her face wreathed in her snowdrift of hair. Her expression was incomprehensible.

Billy could do nothing but sit and stare. His mind –if you could even call it that-was reeling. Abstractions and memories jumbled in his skull: the sun's glare (this had sent him into hysterics on his way to school), the crumble of dirt on his tongue (from when he had licked a potted plant a few hours ago), and the macaroni that he had stuffed down his throat the previous night (he could still feel the saliva pooling in his throat). The only feeling that emerged intact from this quagmire was his befuddlement: the longer Mandy sat, the stranger he felt. And so he reached out to her, gathering her fingers up in his, unable to reach any kind of epiphany whatsoever. Mandy lay in her bed like corpse in its coffin, her eyes shining as if they would never close, as if they were only marbles rammed into her empty eye sockets, left to reflect the heavens for all of eternity.

"I liked your story, Mandy." Billy suddenly whispered, for he had no sense of when not to shatter the silence. This was certainly one of those times.

Mandy looked as though she had just seen God perched on her windowsill, her horror drawing the last blush of color from her cheeks-her hand was in Billy's and she had only just noticed. She was all bone and ice, terribly human, her eyes alight, her hair aflame with a dazzle of moonlight, and her breath wrenched away. And then suddenly she smashed back into life, the thunderhead sliding in and drenching her face in shadow, her sword-eyes glinting, her fists clenching, and her jaw hardening. She whipped free from Billy's grasp, slamming him away with the thunder of a freight train, knocking him into the bed's backboard and crushing the air from his lungs. He sniffed, a syllable slipping from his trembling lips-but Mandy staunched the flow before it began.

"Shut up- I've told you your stupid story," she growled, grinding her teeth like a wolverine. "_Now get your butt out of my bed and get __**out**__ of my house_."

Billy sat in a stupor, as if no one had spoken to him at all, his face glazed with a vacant grin.

"_**Now**_," Mandy spat, jabbing a finger toward her bedroom door. Billy's eyes wandered. His heart spluttered. He blinked. He breathed. Every second of his silence darkened the thunderhead that glowered over Mandy's shoulder—first it was a shower, then a thunderstorm, and finally, a hurricane, blazing with torrents of hatred. If looks could kill, this one would kill instantaneously. It wasn't until Mandy's fingers itched to wring his neck that Billy finally sprang to life, straightening his shoulders, lapping his tongue, and sliding off of the bed, smirking and planting his grubby feet on the carpet.

"Ok; see ya tomorrow, Mandy!" he chirped, flapping his arms in a wave as he padded over to her doorway, scratching the leg of his pajamas as he went. Mandy merely growled in response, glaring daggers at him as he skipped away. She glowered from her window as the slam of the front door rumbled through the house, Billy's frenetic form half-dashing and half-stumbling across the street to his own moon-frosted front lawn, an oncoming Hummer swerving to just barely avoid crushing him to bits as he ran. The night was split with the shriek of tires, the sweep of headlights, the stench of burning rubber, and the explosion of Billy's uncontrollable giggling. Mandy turned away from her window and breathed, crawling back into bed and burying herself in her covers, a frown etched on her face like engravings on a slab of marble. Moonlight spilled from the windowsill and drenched her bed, her characteristic spikes of hair throwing a demonic shadow upon the wall. Her eyelids sheathed their weapons as she settled into her pillow, the moonlight frosting her like concrete. She sighed, and Hell murmured in her breath.

-END-


End file.
